a little overdone. The V of her eyebrows lifted suddenly...
There! Brigitte sneaked a hand behind her back, as if to take something from her cousin standing behind.
“Move—” Meredith opened her parasol and jabbed it in front of Sonja. A split-second later, dark liquid exploded on it, peppering the side of Meredith’s face and the shoulder of her gown. She instinctively sidestepped a second ink bomb thrown by Freya. That one burst on the lawn behind her, its rubber balloon pieces gurgling in a dark frothy streak.
For a moment, seagull cries and the rumble of distant waves were the only sounds in Niflheim.
Sonja balled her right fist, fingered the cap off the point of her bracelet, and darted for Brigitte Sorensen. “Have some of this!” She struck in precisely the right place, the side of her neck, injecting a dose of the paralytic solution. Instant drowsiness.
The plan had been to prick the cousins’ hands, one by one, surreptitiously, as they ventured close during the heated argument, but there wasn’t time for that now. Meredith sprang at Freya, ignoring her scream, and pricked her jugular. Lastly, Sonja ducked Helga’s wild slap and injected her cheek—a reckoning for the personal humiliation heaped upon her by the youngest troll three years ago.
A giddy flush of triumph overcame Meredith as she stalked around her sluggish prey. She gave a whoop of delight, then she and Sonja skipped away together, pretending to curious partygoers that they were batting away a swarm of angry mosquitoes. A nice touch—Sonja’s, invented the night before. It would spread a faux explanation for the Sorensens’...strange reaction.
Dozens of guests flocked to the now-mute trio, whose drunken stumbling elicited a glorious smattering of laughter from around the garden. Positively glorious.
Ah, sweet, sweet revenge.
Phase one was a resounding success.
Meredith rubbed her hands together. “All right, now we hammer the nail in. Give the signal.”
***
A stunned silence gripped the garden party. It was by now several score strong—almost everyone had ventured outside to witness the commotion. A large white projection screen unfurled from the upper balcony of the manor house. It droned and then whumped taut, its stiff frame patting the gothic stone balcony.
Sonja blanked out the voice in her head telling her this was cruel overkill, that they’d had their revenge on the Sorensens. She’d almost said as much when Merry had first floated this plan, but tonight was not as clear-cut as the dictates of her own conscience. No, only she knew Merry’s pain. Only she’d had to endure those long, fractured nights, looking helplessly on, pretending not to notice the endless tossing and turning, the tormented groans, the sickly odour of sweat-soaked sheets. For months, years now. That awful humiliation of three years ago had traumatized Merry more than anyone knew.
Perhaps Sonja’s youth—thirteen at the time—and her lack of social awareness had made her more resilient to the shock, whereas Merry, who’d been on the threshold of romance and courtship and that raw self-consciousness all teenaged girls are cursed with, had had nowhere to retreat to. The dashing young Viking men whose attentions she’d caught, even commanded, had watched on as she’d been exposed, helpless and humiliated.
Sonja looked across at her big sister. That same torment broiled inside Merry now, pursing her lips to the size of a halfpenny. It blazed with anticipation from her wide eyes as she fixed on the moonlit projection screen. Her balled fists trembled at her sides.
Sonja sucked in a breath, let the vicarious venom flush through her, and gave William the wave.
This was not for her, it was for Merry.
The beam from the pavilion roof brightened until the projection screen shone brilliantly silver-white. Borrowing the screen and the steam-powered moving image projector from Professor Sorensen’s conference hall had been a nice coup—William had helped. A strange lad, shy but determined. He was the professor’s ward, an orphan from Northwest England, and didn’t seem to fit in here or anywhere else for that matter. But he’d taken their part admirably this past week.
A chorus of outraged gasps sounded from around the garden as the moving images flickered on the twenty-foot screen. Sonja flinched, not wanting to look but she had to. This was Merry’s—and her—collection of a debt. But something told her it would not close the account. No, there would inevitably be a reckoning for this reckoning.
To hell with them.
The Sorensens, au naturel, frolicked in the lake for all of Norwegian high society to see. The glimpses of their immodesty were brief and partial, but the